Quote:
Originally Posted by Carl Stanford
I was also underwhelmed with Esoterrorists. The setting is a very shallow rip-off of other secret-organisations-that-hunt-monsters and the rules are not revolutionary nor solve the problems with investigative games.
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It's more of a secret organisation that hunts another secret organisation, but your point is still clear. For the record, which games in particular do you think it's "ripping off"?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Carl Stanford
You know what the 'great' revolution is of the Esoterrorists? Nominate which clues are essential and give these away when the players are in a specific location. Besides these free clues the players can also roll for additional clues but have to spend a limited amount of points on these rolls. Why a limited amount? So, they have to choose when they are looking for clues. Why this system is better suited for investigative scenarios than a "unlimited rolls" skill-based system like CoC is not very clear to me.
And how quickly will players figure out that they will get all the essential clues to reach the end of the scenario for free and therefore save their limited pool of points for the big finale of the adventure?
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You don't roll for additional clues. You get every clue you ask about at a location and you can get extra style/flavour clues for spending points. There's no point to saving investigative skill points. The system is "better" because you can never fail to get an important clue and have an adventure run into a dead end through bad dice luck.
That's the "revolutionary" aspect of the system. Obviously it's only "better" and "revolutionary" to the degree that you agree that that "feature" of investigative systems is a problem.
Saving points just means the PCs completed the adventure without looking cool: more like a regular crime lab/investigation team than CSI.
In fact, I think CSI is the best analogy for the game. If you want to hunt supernatural terrorists in the style of Grisham and co, then the Esoterrorists might be for you.